So Different

Three years ago today, at 8PM, the course of my life was inextricably altered from the path I expected it to go down with three words. Acute Myeloid Leukemia.

Today on my drive into work I saw a person being placed on a stretcher after a motorcycle accident.

Life is not always what you think it will be. Every day that your plans go as designed is a minor miracle.

My life is so very different from what it was 3 years and one week ago... So different that I often feel like it was another life, lived by another person. So different that it feels like something I watched happen on a tv show.

In my Creative Writing class, I really don't want to turn into the girl who only writes about death and cancer and dealing with it all. But at the same time... It's something that I know-- something that I know rather well. And it seems like everything keeps coming back to it, no matter how I try to run from it.

It's hard to know how to embrace and accept something you never wanted to be, but are, nonetheless.

It's hard because you desperately want everyone to know but you don't wanted to be treated differently.

Actually that isn't true. I do want to be treated differently. When it comes down to it I want respect for living through it. I don't need the sympathy, and I don't want the pity. I have no use for being treated with kid gloves or for "handle with care" signs. But I want the recognition that I know a tiny bit more about life than my age or my appearance would imply. I want the respect of somehow managing to still thrive despite tragedy. I want the acknowledgement that I make pretty kick-ass lemonade out of some horrendously rotten lemons.

There are times I just feel so different. I'm an okapi... I look like part zebra, part pony, but I'm actually a lot closer to a giraffe... and I don't really fit in anywhere. Heck, most people aren't really even aware that okapi's actually exist, beyond tangentially. They certainly don't expect to just run into one in the middle of their day.